Startin' With Me
by happytobeyourdork
Summary: Eight years ago, things fell apart with one of the Sons and the rest of the Covenant. A song comes on the radio, and some questions may be answered, and some mistakes forgiven.


Hey guys!!! Okay, so still not having much luck with my STUPID writer's block on Paths Crossed. But I wrote this awesome (maybe?) songfic about family and love and angst (my fav 8D). Here goes.

**Disclaimer**: I do not own the movie Covenant, because if I did Reid would have gotten sooo much more screen time, or the song Startin' With Me by Jake Owen.

Enjoy!

* * *

The remaining members of the Covenant and their friends- Caleb, Pogue, Tyler, Sarah, Kate, Terra, Tyler's little sister, Morgan, Terra's husband, Elena, Reid's sister and Tyler's wife, and all their parents that were still alive (Pogue and Tyler's fathers and all the mothers)- sat around the Danver's living room, each with a beer in hand and a smile on their faces, laughing at one of the few good memories from the second generations younger years that hadn't been tainted by the memories of _Him_. A mixed genre radio station was playing softly in the background.

"And then me and Re..." Pogue trailed off in his tale of a crazy cop chase the four Brothers, back when they were still four, had had in college. The memories of _Him _were a still little too harsh and a lot too painful in the group's heads, even with the reasons that he was gone.

Silence fell over the group. The cords of an old slow classic trailed out. The announcer came on. "Here's a little country music for all you fans out there. This is a live version of a rather new song, with a little introductory piece, from **Reid Garwin**, called Startin' With Me."

All of the gathered eyes widened. They hadn't heard so much as a whisper from the rebel-without-a-cause bad boy in almost eight years, and now here he was, on the radio, with a country song, of all things.

"_This song is about my worst mistakes, the kind you desperately wish you could take back. And I just wanted to say, that if the people who this song are about are listening, and you'll know who you are, I truly am sorry for what I've done."_

That was definitely Reid's voice, though it had acquired a much softer- and stranger- southern drawl to it that contrasted the voice in their painful memories, yet held so much in common that it made their almost-buried heartaches throb.

_I had a one night stand with my best friend's baby sister  
And to this day he still won't speak to me_

Tyler shut his eyes, thinking about that night. They had just graduated from college, and Terra had been out drinking with them. The two were drunk out of their minds and slept together.

The next morning, and for weeks after, Reid had apologized a thousand times, both to Terra and Tyler, but Tyler wouldn't listen to it. He hadn't said a word to Reid in the two months before he had vanished, with only a single note that contained a several scratched out writings, with only two legible words (a shaky _I'm Sorry_, written in his messy cursive) and several dried tears stains.

He still regretted that he hadn't excepted Reid' apology.

_I pawned my grandpa's old guitar in collage  
For a case of beer and a tank of gasoline  
_

Elena's ice blue eyes, identical to her twin's, glazed over at the memory of that. Reid had always been rebellious, but selling that guitar that snapped something in her, and the rest of the family that couldn't be fixed.

And even though that old guitar (bought back from the pawn shop), sat in her bedroom in a dusty box in the corner- waiting for the only one in the family who knew how to play it to pick it up again- it was that single mistake, caused a lapse of judgment in her idiotic brother's mind, had caused the largest rift between the two.

Elena missed her twin, idiotic or not.

_I took a swing at my old man one Christmas  
I never dreamed that it would be his last_

Patrick Parry remembered that. The four bloodlines were like family to each other, and Christmas and all the other holidays were spent together. No one could remember what had started the fight between the Garwin boys, or even what it was about.

But the fight ended with Reid punching his father, and Rafael Garwin (and the others of the Elder generation) screaming at the blond to leave. And so, with a mixture of shame and regret, the younger boy had done so.

He still blamed himself when Reid never showed for the funeral or the next Christmas.

_I wish mom had rung my neck when she caught me with those cigarettes  
Which reminds me, I'm down to my last pack  
_

Meredith Garwin, shook her head slowly at the memory. That day that been a trying one. Reid's attitude that bugged her, and searching through his bag, she had found his pack of cigarettes.

She had taken them away, search his room, grounded him, and they had had a long talk. She promised that she would be checking him constantly for cigarettes.

She wishes she had kept that promise.

_If I had a dime for half the things I did  
That didn't make no sense at all, I'd be living a little higher on the hog  
If only I'd've known that later on down the road  
I'd look back and not like what I see  
I'd've changed a lot of things startin' with me_

Sarah wondered about the chorus. She and Reid had never been close, but him leaving like he had had still hurt.

She wondered if these insecurities the song boasted had developed after he left, or if his bad-boy, I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude had been a show, protecting the scared and scarred person underneath.

She thought that if the latter was true, his actions made a lot of sense.

_I called my brother everything I could think of  
The night he wouldn't bail me out of jail_

Caleb was the one who reacted to this line the strongest. Reid had always teased his brothers, but he and Caleb were always at each others throats, fighting constantly.

One night, Reid had gotten arrested for being at a party. They said that he wasn't allowed to access his bank accounts until the next day, but Caleb could pay the mere $50 bail and take him home. He had refused, always eager to put Reid down. Reid had cussed him out the next day, and Caleb had gotten so pissed off he had Used to throw him into a concrete wall.

Caleb still feels guilty because he knows Reid never really meant the things he called him.

_I lost a job most folks 'round here would die for  
By laying out all night and raising hell_

The assistant's job at a rather big local company was the one every just-out-of Harvard student would have died for, Kate remembers.

And Reid that gotten himself fired after being caught in a bar-fight with Harvard's version of Aaron Abbot. She had been so self-righteous when she got the job.

She still feels like a hypocrite about he fight she got into with Havard's Kira two weeks later.

_And I let a woman that I love slip through my fingers  
Chalk another dumb move up to my foolish pride_

Terra felt the single wet tear go down her clear skin. That one night stand had turned into a relationship that she never told her brother about. And she had known Reid had loved her, even though she had caught him with another girl. He had been drunk at the time, and the girl had looked and awful lot like her.

Reid refused to acknowledge that night, and his pride had done them in. She called the relationship quits, two days before they found him gone.

She still feels ashamed when she remembers that she had slept with another guy two weeks before she caught him.

_I was in there standin' by the bed when the preacher bowed his head  
With the family, the day my grandma died_

Terrance Simms knew this wasn't about his actual grandmother, for both had died when he was young. His was about Tyler's grandmother, who had been that had been one to all of the Sons.

Reid had still been angry from the fight at Christmastime and hadn't returned home with the others when Shelby Simms had passed.

Terrance still feels he should have apologized for yelling at Reid.

_If I had a dime for half the things I did  
That didn't make no sense at all, I'd be living a little higher on the hog  
If only I'd've known that later on down the road  
I'd look back and not like what I see  
Ohh, I'd've changed a lot of things startin' with me_

_If only I'd've known that later on down the road  
I'd look back and not like what I see  
Ohh, I'd've changed a lot of things startin' with me  
Startin' with me  
_

Silence lingered around the room. The song had been so true and the things that had made them mad at the blond seemed so unjustified now.

"Never thought Reid would be one to sing country." Terra's light voice broke through the silence. A ghost of a grin lingered on her tear-streaked face as she thought of how much it contrasted the boy she had loved, still loved. The others laughed quietly, grinning at the thought and at some of the good times they had had with Reid.

* * *

Outside, in the rainy New England weather, the blond-haired source of the discussion inside smiled slightly and, eyes onyx in one of the rare signs of Using, dropped 30 feet from the elevated windowsill.

He sauntered up to the front door, finally ready to face the past he had tried so hard to run from. So, Reid lifted his gloved hand (because some things never do change) and knocked.

* * *

Like it? Love it? Hate it? Review it!!!

Any ?s, just PM me and I'll answer as soon as possible.

Just remember, if the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.

peace,

redhead


End file.
